Suggestions for further research

Web sites that are critical of TM...

TM-Free. This is a blog with
several highly knowledgeable ex-TMer contributors. These are people who know where
the bodies are buried.

Coming To Life Stories.
This is Gina Catena's blog. I mention her in my
discussion of David Lynch. She literally grew up
in the "TM Movement" (as TMers like to call it) and also knows where the bodies are
buried. She is also a frequent contributor to the TM-Free blog mentioned above.

Web sites that educate the public about destructive cults

Books that educate the public about destructive cults

The best single book to start with is Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven
Hassan. This book is an excellent
popular introduction to the psychological
techniques used by destructive cults to
surreptitiously alter their recruits' experience
of reality.

Another excellent book is Cults in Our Midst by Margaret Thaler Singer, Janja
Lalich, and Robert Jay Lifton. Dr. Margaret Singer is emeritus
Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley,
and is one of the foremost contributors to the understanding of the
psychological influence techniques used by destructive cults in
order to recruit and retain members.
There are many references in the book to "empty mind meditation."
Before publication she had originally specifically written
"Transcendental Meditation" instead, but a professor at
MUM caught wind of it and she was
threatened with a
SLAPP suit that she didn't want to have to defend.

TM and Cult Mania was the book that introduced me to how
TM worked via trance and suggestion. It is written by Michael A.
Persinger Ph.D. He is Coordinator of the Behavioural Neuroscience
Program at Laurentian University.

Not only do they go out in public in those things, but they
give speeches!
In this
video David Lynch introduces the Raja of Germany at a press
conference being held to announce the purchase of a site for
Berlin's new Tower of Invincibility (that's what the building in the picture
is). The Raja starts to spout torrents of standard TM-babble
but the German
crowd is apparently culturally very perceptive of snow-jobs.

If your horoscope says that things are looking dark then
don't panic, you can make
sacrifices to the Vedic gods to make things ok again.
(Hey, that's cool if you're Hindu but this is supposed to be a completely secular
relaxation technique that's being taught!)

In fact, as a TMer you'll buy just about anything with a "Maharishi"
brand!. The "Maharishi
Vedic Observatory" is just amazing. Click on the yantras (those things in
the ring) to read about the "Vedic influence" of each according to "Maharishi
Vedic Science." And the Observatory is easy to use! All you have to do is to look at the
thing (search for "How to Use") and "ten kinds of specific balancing
influences are enlivened in the physiology." Ordering is
easy! It's a mere
$4.000 and comes with its own maple table and domed cover!

Here's an experiment:

Please meet John
Hagelin, Ph.D., Director of the Institute of Science,
Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of
Management, and Minister of Science and Technology of the
Global Country of World Peace. Whew.

The experiment involves listening to his "important
message for all military leaders." Go to his
website at the link above, find "Dr. Hagelin presents the
Invincible Defense Technology", and click on the "Watch on
Flash" link just below.

Listen to it for a full 15 minutes, making your best
effort to follow his arguments.

Did your mind sort of glaze over while listening, enough
so that you had to struggle somewhat to resume your effort
to pay attention? In other words, did you get a bit spaced
out? You may have gone into a light trance. Listening to
extended complicated nonsense delivered in a pleasant
monotone is a form of trance induction. You only had to
listen for 15 minutes, but a TMer would have listened to the
entire hour and a quarter! TMers, who have already proven
themselves to be susceptible to trance induction, listen to
thousands of hours of this sort of thing during their
careers.